


Red, White & Blue

by MMXIII



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-30
Updated: 2013-10-30
Packaged: 2017-12-30 23:40:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1024770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MMXIII/pseuds/MMXIII
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mycroft has plans<br/>Jim has nightmares<br/>& Sebastian's in trouble</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red, White & Blue

**Author's Note:**

> Another work in progress but I don't have much time on my hands atm so I'm 'sketching' I guess :)  
> Thanks for reading, sorry they're all short! ^^

‘Three years.’

‘One.’

‘Eighteen months in an undisclosed overseas facility.’

The following silence is punctuated by a curt, yet undeniably irreverent nod.

The ether is thick with brutally stifled rage, its faint iron taint lying heavy in the air – a smoke will undoubtedly be in order afterwards. Something to calm the nerves a little, lower the traitorous pulse.

The dark-haired man stands up, tucks his chair in, adjusts his cuffs. Each action is a little stilted, a little too deliberate; he is smiling, but his eyes are black.

'names' says Holmes softly, daring to instigate eye contact, 'names and numbers'

 

Despite himself, Mycroft shudders a little as he watches James Moriarty stride out of the cafe and fade away, bleeding into the cracks of a vast metropolitan jungle. Sitting back in his chair, hands flat on the table rather than steepled, he considers, not for the first time, the gravity of this particular scheme. The Moriarty network is vast, it would be foolish to set one’s sights on the destruction of the entire infrastructure, and yet he had not been wrong in his inference of the work of another hand amidst the heedless chaos. Someone trained, obedient, reckless. Sliding the thick manila file that mediated the meeting into his briefcase, he recalls the immensely arduous task of compiling the information therein _. Cpt Sebastian Moran_ , it reads, _31years old, 6’2”,_ going on to detail personal information: _medical and military records, last known sightings, affiliates, known residences, observed habits…_ Mycroft flicks though the pages in his mind’s eye as he slides one arm through his coat,  _documented offenses include blackmail, fraud, drug trafficking, unlawful possession of arms, grievous bodily harm, murder, terrorism,  treason…_ it's a life sentence, was a life sentence not fifteen minutes ago...

 

Over the course of the next week, Sergeant Jonathan C. Moran and DI Sebastian Hall fail to report for duty. They are duly found, on Sunday afternoon, on the banks of the Thames in separate locations, eyes, ears and fingers removed.

Something of  a romantic gesture Mycroft muses to himself quietly, folding his arms behind him as he stands at the sidelines; the grotesque theatricality is itself an affirmation of partnership.

 

Sherlock sends him a significant look over the police tape but says nothing.

 

 

                                    ________________________________________

 

 Sebastian is wasted. Its obvious in his shallow chest as his caged ribs emboss the papery skin, taught with dehydration, crusted with blood. Each exhalation drags dry air across the back of his sticky throat. The angles and planes of his body are picked out in pooling bruises and gaping lacerations, violent striped of colour across a frame whiter than bone. Back arched, the vertebrae of his spine and the flat teeth of his shoulder blades gnaw at his back from the inside like shards of glass under stained silk. His shoulder throbs from being wrenched out of the socket, and from being just as forcefully cracked back in. From being strung up and tied down. And throughout the torment reoccur three phrases of clipped queens English; _who is is, where is he, what does he want…_

Sebastian doesn’t scream, doesn’t flinch, just loosens his muscles so each blow is less jarring. Each crunch of splintered bone skates across the breezeblock cell, fractious, sickening. 

 

Jim rises out of sleep silently, staring blankly into the blackness above him, images of splintered right hands and cracked jaws staining the inside of his eyelids. With an only slightly tremulous exhalation, each solid, material sensation returns one by one; cotton draped over his hips, crinkled under his fingers, pooling around his ankles, and Sebastian’s soft breathing not inches to his right. In the fledgling light of dawn Sebastian’s more angular features are tinged with half light, blonde hair almost silver, curled at the nape. Jim reaches out across the darkness and places the index and forefinger of his right hand in the slack upturned palm of Sebastian’s left. All at once the raging hurricane behind his eyes lapses into a glorious moment of deferral as one filament of thought shoots through his frantic brain,  overriding all the relentless blood-soaked background tasks;

 

 _Sebastian_.

 

Turning softly in the sheets Jim slides his fingers across Sebastian’s palm until their thumbs interlock loosely, holding their palms together in quiet union. Sebastian’s fingers twitch almost imperceptibly, the tips seem a little darker than the rest of his hand. Sebastian murmurs incoherently as Jim settles a little closer, watching him sleep.

 

 

 


End file.
